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Sources:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/shuttle_faq.html#10
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2010/02/us-government-budget-proposals-increase-clean-energy-funding

2.360M / 450M * 100 = 524.44%

Yeah, I agree, we are WAY over spending on renewable energy.

We can anticipate a zone of exclusion in this case. When nuclear power breaks, it does so in an ungraceful manner. It poisons the surrounding land and makes it uninhabitable. It disrupts power supply by forcing the shutdown of plants around the world and within its own grid limits the ability to provide substitute power http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2011/04/nuclear-woes-boost-japanese-wind-but-supply-remains-limited These properties make nuclear power the most unreliable form of generation. It is not the whispers but the shrapnel that pose a problem for nuclear power.

Re: Germany http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2009/04/germany-the-worlds-first-major-renewable-energy-economy http://www.buildings.com/ArticleDetails/tabid/3334/ArticleID/11755/Default.aspx http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/26/germany-nuclear-power-protest_n_841023.html http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2011/03/23/tech-germany-nuclear.html

Because they planned and started building out their reactors before we invented that technology.

So what, LFTR is more than 20 years old and France could have used it for new plants. But they did not.

Looking for the cost of LFTR I came across aimhigh - rethinkingnuclearpower, a pro nuclear power page, which says a 100 MW unit will cost $200 million. It then says it can be developed in 5 years. Someone on Metaefficient says wind turbines have an installed cost of $2000 per KW, the same price as LFTR. And if only 10 5 Megawatt wind turbines are erected a month, for 10 months, wind could add 100 megawatts in 2 years. In the 5 years for LFTR 500 megawatts could be added. Double that by doubling the number of turbines.

Falcon

It's a subsidy, because it costs the nuke corp less than it would cost to get a loan from a commercial bank, if it could even get one. Anything that makes the cost lower is a subsidy.

Alternatives like wind and solar do get subsidies. But this year Bloomberg compared the $43-46B in subsidies to renewables (not including nukes) to the $557B spent subsidizing petrofuels (not including nukes) in 2008. Again, neither of those subsidies account subsidies to nukes. But the point is whether any of these energy industries stand on their own, and nukes do not. Neither do the alternatives, but there are good reasons to subsidize them: they're better, and will cost the public less in the long run once we're converted to using them predominantly.

This one doesn't use salt, but we have had one very similar built here back in 2008. http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2010/07/areva-boosts-solar-supersteam-parameters-in-bakersfield

Huh. I don't live all that far from Bakersfield, and I've always wondered what that gangly thing was...

This one doesn't use salt, but we have had one very similar built here back in 2008. http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2010/07/areva-boosts-solar-supersteam-parameters-in-bakersfield

Case in point: the insane people who think it's dandy to use wireless technologies for intra-plant communications.

Like here.

Perfect setup for spectrum warfare.

WHY DON'T WE GET SOME DAMN POWER LINES FIRST!!!!

Very good question. It's so good ERCOT asked it themselves and the first fruits of that discussion have already started coming on line. The problem is construction of those new lines will take time and the growth spurt of West Texas Wind the last few years has overwhelmed the existing grid.

Disclaimer: I work for Nextera Energy Resources (formerly FPL Energy)

Hate to break this news to you but Texas has more renewable energy than California. (http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2009/10/ec-r-completes-780-mw-roscoe-wind-farm) California is going third world in so many ways.

Wow!

2.5 MW.

That's really going to replace those 1,000 MW single nuclear reactors.

Wow, what'ja know, there are wind turbines bigger than 2.5 MW. Erect 10 5 MW or 5 10 MW wind turbines a month for 10 months and you add 1,000 MW of capacity. If work is done all year you've added 1.2 GW. How long will that nuclear power plant of yours take to build? And don't say a year. Construction on Finland's Olkiluoto 3 reactor started in 2005. It was originally scheduled to start operations this year, 2009, but is 3 years behind schedule and isn't expected to start until 2011-12. Also it's cost overrun is EUR1.5 billion so far. And you can't complain that is because of US regulations, nor because of the inexperience of the builders. One of those contractors is the French government owned Areva, Siemens is another. Both companies have experience building nuclear power plants.

Falcon

Nuclear power plants in the 1500 Megawatt range cost 30-40 Billion dollars just to build.

Nonsense. The new French reactor, 1650 MWe, has a pricetag of $4.8 billion. Recent Japanese and Korean reactors were in the same range - $2-3/W (PPP), as surveyed by MIT CEEPR (under "update on the cost of nuclear power"). The accompanying study (2009) predicts costs for new US reactors to be $4/W. In short, the numbers are consistent. You can look up cost figures, levelized cost studies (here's a start) up and down, and you will find this is true.

Wind Farms in the 1500 Megawatt range cost 300-400 million dollars to build.

Also nonsense. Just take one recent UK wind farm, which came in at £111 M for 60 MWe - $2.07/W, or extrapolating, over $3 billion for 1500 MW. You can survey costs all over the web, and this is typical. Whitelee, Europe's largest onshore farm, cost £300M ($496M) for 322 MWe, $1.54/W. Lynn and Inner Dowsing - UK's largest offshore farm - came in at £300 M ($496 M) for 194 MWe, $2.56/MW. The famous London Array is now at £3B ($4.96 billion) for 1,000 MWe: $4.96/W. (To be fair though, this represents a 200% cost overrun over the original estimates.) (Sorry about the angstrom signs: they are supposed to be British "pound" symbols)

Also, besides the fact that your bogus figures for wind are 10 times cheaper than reality (and for nuclear, 10 times more expensive than reality), your comparison is bogus in yet another away. You comparable incomparable quantities: a megawatt of baseload yields far more energy than a megawatt of wind power - because it yields power continuously, whereas the wind turbines are very frequently down, or generating at fractional capacity. This is represented by the "capacity factor", which is the fraction of the nameplate capacity actually achieved by a power plant - ratio of [average power output]/[power capacity]. And while nuclear power plants, as generally reliable baseload plants, run at 90%+ capacity factor - that is, average 0.90 MWe of generation for each 1 MWe of nameplate capacity - wind farms, becuase of the obvious intermittency of wind, average only 20-30% capacity factors, with some exceptional offshore locations yielding 40%. Those megawatts are completely incomparable: 1 MWe of nuclear yields 2-4 times more energy than 1 MWe of wind power.

We keep going after the same model over and over again. Search Finster's Law: A closed mouth gathers no feet. Big conglomerates produce and consumers buy. They get to set the rates and raise prices when they can come up with an excuse (weather, maintenance, etc) and commodities traders can bet on the spot prices. It's an old and broken model that benefits corporations while sapping money from consumers. With all the billions they keep mentioning wouldn't it be nice if someone had a clue and said: "if we give people a big enough incentive to use renewable sources at their business, home, government offices, etc we would not need more expensive transmission lines" Instead of wasting OUR tax dollars on supporting a broken model let's support a self sufficient model. We give tax incentives to homeowners, landlords, apartment owners, builders, etc to incorporate solar, wind, geothermal, etc into the actual buildings. Schools and local governments can get grants to become producers of energy (solar, wind, geothermal, etc) and sell excess to the business next door or the house down the street. With schools being closed during peek hours of daylight, there is a lot of potential. Government buildings can be retrofitted to be energy neutral or even produce excess (considering they work 9-5 there is a lot of potential to produce excess energy after hours in the southern sunny states) for the local community. In high demand hours a local message to clean energy buildings can ask them to reduce their own usage to increase output to the grid. The smart grid that is needed is updating local utilities to buy excess from anyone who provides clean energy. not what some utilities do, offset your own usage but anything extra they get for free. Germany started a solar revolution by allowing anyone that wanted to install solar to get a set price for 20 years. after the 20 year period imagine what their energy costs will be, from the highest in the region to possibly the lowest. Farmers are installing solar arrays and getting additional income, banks are financing the installations, over a million jobs created from the solar industry. Other countries are starting to see the long term potential of getting off this energy roller coaster. http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2009/04/solar-incentives-could-ontario-be-the-next-germany It's OUR tax dollars they are using so let's put it to use in the right location, our local towns, schools, grocery stores, government buildings, libraries etc and not to support antiquated models fo they produce and we consume.

Power transmission is a bigger emergency than wind power.

And it would seem Texas and California would agree. Both have approved multi Billion dollar infrastructure upgrades. Which, even if a new wind farm started construction today likely would not be operational prior to the completion of the new lines several years from now.

Disclaimer: I work for the parent company of Lone Star Transmission.

If this were the case, there would be capitalists all over the world assembling massive solar arrays for electricity production.

*coughs*

No, suppose there aren't any companies like that that you can invest in that go around and build massive solar arrays for clients.

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2007/05/chinas-solar-powered-city-48605 China is already way ahead

you of course left out a few steps in the electric, IE electric power plant 40% efficient, power grid 95% efficient, (not to mention the costly endeavor in land and materials of maintaining the growing need for more grid) and of course the wasted effort of carrying a 800 pound battery instead of a 16 pounds of gas+ 40 pound generator. I am sure you would say something about charging by night or solar, that works as long as only a few cars and eventually... currently renewable energy is taxed over 100% with natural gas/coal needing burned 24/7

And you left out a few steps too, from well head to tank.

As far as renewables being taxed, correctly if I'm wrong but I'll take that to mean they can't provide all the electrical needs. If so, SciAm's article "A Solar Grand Plan" says solar energy can provide 69% of the US's electrical needs by 2050. Another abundant source of energy is wind. The Rocky Mountains along have enough potential wind power to provide the 48 continuous states with electricity. The Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States details wind potential in various regions of the US. As a baseload geothermal energy can be used.

Falcon

Developing commercial uses will only encourage us to build more.

Yes. And used responsibly that can be a good thing. We might even see new nuclear power plants, which is definitely a good thing.

Citation needed.

More nuclear power plants are not needed. Alternative energy sources can generate plenty of electricity, even for electric vehicles. According to the article "A Solar Grant Plan" in SciAm by 2050 solar electricity can provide 69% of the US's energy. And the wind potential in the Rockies is enough to provide the 48 continuous states with electricity as well. The Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States details by region the wind potential of the US. And for a baseload geothermal can be used, though the SciAm article also goes over energy storage.

Falcon

Its happening as you write. Just got back from a new field in Oregon. Coast farms are nothing new, and Texas is under construction. By the way, there's job growth in this sector. I think your argument is getting blown away daily.

I try to provide links so I may support my position and so that people not simply assume I'm making stuff up.

As do I, I was just mentioning that you got a little basic there - I generally post links for any specific statistics or information, not general stuff.

However neither solar nor wind should need nearly as much of either than a nuclear power plant will.

Solar, well, it depends a LOT on the specifics of the installation. Biggest user of concrete would probably be a stand alone plant with concrete supports, but you could probably substitute metal for a lot of concrete. On the other hand, the concrete needed for monopole type wind turbines will surprise you.

Though I'm not sure I'd think 200 pylons for 5 megawatt wind turbines would use less concrete and steel than a 1 gigawatt nuclear power plant.

First, I'd like to apologize for crashing your machine. I simply ended up closing the browser after a while. Today I saved the pdf before opening it, works fine. Apparently Adobe's downloading system is messed up.
Do you have a counter for the Berkeley study, showing that wind needing 10 times the steel and 4 times the concrete per MW? (Duplicating the nice html link with the excerpt)
Back on topic - Have you ever seen how much concrete goes into putting footings in for a simple chain link fence? Now consider your 5MW turbine.
Some relevant parts, pulled from the article:
"The machine has the capability of generating approximately 17 GWh of power a year" - 17 GWh/year. Including a 90% capacity factor, a 1GW nuclear plant would produce ~7,884 GWh You'd need 463 turbines to equal the power generation of the nuke plant. Much longer, and you'll be looking at 2 GW plants, right now 1 GW is on the low end for 'big' plants, 1.4 and even 1.6 GW are showing up.
"Winds as low as 3.5 m/s will disengage the electromagnetic disc brakes and the turbine should have peak performance during winds of 13 m/s. Winds of 25 m/s or more will cause the turbine to cut-out."
Minimum wind to produce power: 7.8mph, Max: 55mph, Max power: 29mph.
"The world's largest wind turbine, a 120-meter (394-feet) behemoth" - It's 120 meters tall, and given even the lightweight blades is a monopole design, requiring a good base to withstand the wind in all weather.
Hmm - 45 foot tower, requires a base 3' deep, 6' in diameter. 1/15th in depth, double the depth as width. Scale that up, the 120 meter tower would require a base 8 meters deep, 16 meters wide - 1.6k cubic meters of concrete. To replace the nuke plant you'd need 740k m^3 of concrete.

How much would the nuke plant itself take? Modern nuclear reactors need less than 40 metric tons of steel and 190 cubic meters of concrete per megawatt of average capacity. Alternate site, Berkeley study(PDF warning)

So, using 1970s figures, of which modern plants are designed to 'use even less', a GW plant would require only 190k m^3 of concrete. 40k tons of steel (Imagine how much steel those 463 turbines would need!)

Oh - found a link to that 5MW turbine with steel usage - 1100 tons of steel PER TOWER, for the tower alone. Various parts in the 425 ton head are also made of steel. 509.3k tons of steel to replace that nuke plant. 469k more tons than the

I try to provide links so I may support my position and so that people not simply assume I'm making stuff up.

As do I, I was just mentioning that you got a little basic there - I generally post links for any specific statistics or information, not general stuff.

However neither solar nor wind should need nearly as much of either than a nuclear power plant will.

Solar, well, it depends a LOT on the specifics of the installation. Biggest user of concrete would probably be a stand alone plant with concrete supports, but you could probably substitute metal for a lot of concrete. On the other hand, the concrete needed for monopole type wind turbines will surprise you.

Though I'm not sure I'd think 200 pylons for 5 megawatt wind turbines would use less concrete and steel than a 1 gigawatt nuclear power plant.

First, I'd like to apologize for crashing your machine. I simply ended up closing the browser after a while. Today I saved the pdf before opening it, works fine. Apparently Adobe's downloading system is messed up.
Do you have a counter for the Berkeley study, showing that wind needing 10 times the steel and 4 times the concrete per MW? (Duplicating the nice html link with the excerpt)
Back on topic - Have you ever seen how much concrete goes into putting footings in for a simple chain link fence? Now consider your 5MW turbine.
Some relevant parts, pulled from the article:
"The machine has the capability of generating approximately 17 GWh of power a year" - 17 GWh/year. Including a 90% capacity factor, a 1GW nuclear plant would produce ~7,884 GWh You'd need 463 turbines to equal the power generation of the nuke plant. Much longer, and you'll be looking at 2 GW plants, right now 1 GW is on the low end for 'big' plants, 1.4 and even 1.6 GW are showing up.
"Winds as low as 3.5 m/s will disengage the electromagnetic disc brakes and the turbine should have peak performance during winds of 13 m/s. Winds of 25 m/s or more will cause the turbine to cut-out."
Minimum wind to produce power: 7.8mph, Max: 55mph, Max power: 29mph.
"The world's largest wind turbine, a 120-meter (394-feet) behemoth" - It's 120 meters tall, and given even the lightweight blades is a monopole design, requiring a good base to withstand the wind in all weather.
Hmm - 45 foot tower, requires a base 3' deep, 6' in diameter. 1/15th in depth, double the depth as width. Scale that up, the 120 meter tower would require a base 8 meters deep, 16 meters wide - 1.6k cubic meters of concrete. To replace the nuke plant you'd need 740k m^3 of concrete.

How much would the nuke plant itself take? Modern nuclear reactors need less than 40 metric tons of steel and 190 cubic meters of concrete per megawatt of average capacity. Alternate site, Berkeley study(PDF warning)

So, using 1970s figures, of which modern plants are designed to 'use even less', a GW plant would require only 190k m^3 of concrete. 40k tons of steel (Imagine how much steel those 463 turbines would need!)

Oh - found a link to that 5MW turbine with steel usage - 1100 tons of steel PER TOWER, for the tower alone. Various parts in the 425 ton head are also made of steel. 509.3k tons of steel to replace that nuke plant. 469k more tons than the

I didn't exactly need links to such simple near universal construction materials as concrete, steel, cement, and such. I'm well aware of the nuclear cycle.

I try to provide links so I may support my position and so that people not simply assume I'm making stuff up.

It's not like wind doesn't need them either - and a stand alone solar complex will use them as well.

However neither solar nor wind should need nearly as much of either than a nuclear power plant will. Though I'm not sure I'd think 200 pylons for 5 megawatt wind turbines would use less concrete and steel than a 1 gigawatt nuclear power plant. And all the steel used to make the turbine, tower, and pylons would be less too. Even your link to the environmental effects of wind power "suggested a payback time of 1.1 years". That charter only considers CO2 not other environmental considerations also.

Interesting article on green nuclear power

It offers no substance though, basically it's about greenwashing nuclear power.

Update - found it! - but doesn't want to download completely on my system.

It's not just you, I clicked on the link then the browser and preview stopped responding. I tried to force quit then the computer froze. I've had my Mac for almost 1 1/2 years and that's only the second or third tyme that happened. I wish I didn't have the problem, I'm not going to try again.

While Uranium mining and refining is fairly nasty, the trick is that you need so little of it - You'd end up mining more cadmium and other rare and nasty minerals for photovoltaic panels.

I'm not sure if it was you, or someone else who posted about it above, but someone brought up CSP, Concentrating solar power. While PVs are good for roofs, CSP is better in places like the US southwest.

But you lose the bonus points

Darn, that was stupid. Though I didn't try to get the bonus points I put the part about them in my post.

my article still has relevance, since 'Hooked on Subsidies' only mentions putting it up against coal, which I don't consider a viable clean alternative, even with 'clean' and carbon sequestration.

It may be relevant as far as subsidies are concerned, but I think that's part of the problem, subsidies. At most subsidies should only be used temporarily. Those I hate most are the farm subsidies. Take a look at the Farm bill congress passed last year. Enacted on 22 May 2008 it provided $288 billion in subsidies.

And yes, I do consider 'rebates' subsidies.

Subsidies are taxpayer money, in Germany's case it's not government paying it's the utilities. And like with the states that have net metering laws utilities enjoy an avoided cost.

Not that I necessarily object to all subsidies. For example, energy efficiency deductions. I don't think insulation and other energy saving measures should be factored into real estate taxes. Yes, I include solar panels and such in there. Call it my 'people shouldn't be penalized for owning a quality house'. Not a big house, not a fancy house, but a quality one - safe, efficient, well insulated, etc... People shouldn't be penalized for painting their shack and installing good windows.

Darn, I lied above. Actually I hadn't thought of this but I do support the subsidies

Your construction project is also going to have to hardware to link up 240 generators to the grid. Also they probably arn't going to be able to generate their rated power at all times.

That's no problem, that's already being done. " U.S. Wind Energy Installations Top 20 Gigawatts". Here's a chart of how much each state generates: "10 Gigawatts of wind power (AWEA)".

I doubt it actually takes 23 years to construct a nuclear power plant.

Did you also read about the 5 megawatt wind turbines and how fast power capacity can be added?

Also you arn't restricted to windy places to build them

That's alright, some places are good for wind, others are good for geothermal, solar, or tidal. Geothermal energy produced produced 13,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity in California in 2007. On the Big Island of Hawaii geothermal energy produced 25% of the electricity. Houses in New York City are heated by geothermal energy. From British Columbia to Southern California along the Pacific Coast solar is widely available. Here's a list of states with good solar potential: "Solar takes no shine to Nevada". The title refers to the solar industry not wanting to go to Nevada because right across the state line in California the state has a number of incentives to encourage solar. Simply use whatever type of energy an area has.

Falcon

And yet the word "model" appears nowhere in TFA. It refers instead to "quantitative evaluation". You can certainly disagree with the way evaluation was carried out. But you're not doing that. You're claiming that there are "wild assumptions", something I see no evidence of.

Advocates of a given technology tend to be pretty blind to its downsides. This is particularly true for advocates of nuclear power (waste disposal, weapons proliferation, high costs, high NIMBY factor) and biofuels (environmental degradation; diversion of cropland from food production). All this study does is point out these blind spots. The way you dismiss the study out of hand is all too typical of the river-in-Egypt approach to environmental debate.

One caveat with respect to biofuels: most of the objection to it don't apply to plans to extract it from oil-rich algae. But this emerging technology doesn't seem to get much press, probably because it doesn't have the entrenched businesses lobbying for it that nukes and fuel crops do.

You wont get much gain from any investment in alternative energy for years to come...

Exactly. Which is why we need to be building nuke plants NOW and working out ways to ramp up the fuel supply while keeping a close handle of the extra fissile material that will entail and ramming Yucca Mountain into operation.

Nuke power is even slower. To produce 1 gigawatt of power, 20 5 megawatt wind turbines can be erected a month for 10 months. A 1 gigawatt nuclear power plant will takes years to build. Need more energy, erect 50 wind turbines a month every month. You'd have 250 megawatts come online every month, 3 gigawatts a year.

Longer term we do need a better answer and should be working on that, but let the market pick the winner

Here's where nuclear power would really lose, the market will not finance nuclear power plants without government help. And McCain has called to spend billions in subsidies to build nuclear power plants.

Falcon

Oops. Wrong link. This is what I meant to include:

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/reinsider/story?id=49238

and the line of blather you're pushing is pretty damn far off the mark

Is it?

http://www.exyoung.com/Journalism/WindFarm.htm
http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080710/NEWS02/807100355/1003/NEWS02
http://www.redorbit.com/news/business/1434788/wind_farm_project_could_double_in_size_developers_expect_to/
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/story?id=48596
http://www.iberianature.com/spainblog/2008/06/wind-farm-construction-in-capercaillie-habitat-paralysed-by-judge/
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=16203
http://www.wind-watch.org/news/2007/12/31/wind-farm-plans-pose-big-threat-to-harbour-porpoise/
http://renewableenergylaw.blogspot.com/2005/02/kansas-wind-farm-faces-another-lawsuit.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/22/windpower.greenpolitics?gusrc=rss&feed=uknews
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6875711/

I'm not even trying hard. Just put

court halt "wind farm"

into Google. No FOX News involved. And no, these aren't the NIMBY cases; I skipped those. These are enviro's killing wind development over "rare grasslands", various birds, etc.

The evidence for the intolerence of "all the greens" for basically any development at all, including so-called "renewable" energy is obvious. Pull your greeny head our of your ass and pay attention.

Wind generation is placed strategically - remember, its still an investment and they need to sell the energy to recoup on a predictable schedule. This means a historic study with several yield models are built. This models also take into account the weather and census patterns for usage. By the time the project is green-lighted, the variability of a wind farm is ensured to be within the tolerances of the grid's spinning reserve.

  You're not totally off-base, but this issue has been discussed at length. Only one grid gets penetration over 15% with wind, but it's been examined for problems up to about 25%.

More details

Plans for 50% wind penetration are already in the air.